End of summer reading and writing

It occurred to me a little while ago that I hadn’t written anything about what I’ve been reading lately, and so maybe I’ll do that because I have to write something and because that’s a way to avoid thinking about the end of summer and the day that I have to send my son off to college and not have him around every day. I just can’t do it. 

So I’ve been reading. By my estimation, I’ll probably have finished 25 or 26 books by the end of this calendar year. It’s not very many. When I was young, I tore through a book or two every week. Those were the days, I tell you - my eyesight was excellent, and I had all the time in the world. Then I had babies and I didn’t have any time to read. Then the babies grew up a bit, and I had spare moments here and there. Then there were years of sports and school concerts and birthday parties and doctor visits and parent-teacher conferences, and I’d read in between innings at baseball games or in the waiting room at the dentist’s office or in the parking lot while waiting for a kid to finish practice or rehearsal. And then the kids just up and left and now I have all the time in the world again. It sucks, really. 

But back to the books. Books are good. Well, they’re not all good, but books in general are good, is what I meant. 

*****

Against Memoir, by Michelle Tea. I myself am going to come out very strongly against memoir pretty soon if I end up reading just one more shock-the-normies overly frank too-much-sexual-information memoir. I was really about to just give up on this one, and not because I was shocked or disgusted (well, I was a little disgusted but not even a tiny bit shocked because I've read all the same stuff in at least five other memoirs proving that I never learn) but because I was bored. Bored and skeptical. It's not that I didn't believe Tea's stories because why would she make these things up, but because I didn't believe her voice. She was trying so hard - SO HARD - to be daring and outrageous and shocking that I couldn’t really even hear what she was saying. But then she wrote this - or said it, because this is from a talk she gave to an lgbtq writers' group: "Give us your goofiness and your dark depths and your weird family and when you stay up eating cheese on the couch watching bad TV and crying, give us when you feel stupid and the big angry fight you had, give us everything…" in addition to all of the sex and drugs and outre transgressiveness and I thought "Yes, exactly, Michelle Tea, now why not follow your own brilliant advice?" Later, she does exactly that in an unflinching and rather lovely essay about her difficult relationship with her working class hard luck mother and stepfather. The essay is suffused with sadness and guilt but the guilt is unnecessary. Tea clearly loves her mother even though she finds her impossible. So the book wasn't a waste, but I probably won't read any more of Michelle Tea’s work. 

*****

I started writing this on Monday. Five minutes later it’s Wednesday and my son leaves for school tomorrow, making tonight his last night at home. I swam last night and the water was still nice but the air was very cool, making getting out of the pool much harder than getting in. Today it’s warm, but not hot outside, and the breeze has an edge of Canadian coolness that suggests the imminent arrival of fall. Actually, at my house, the falling part of fall has been in full swing for a week. Our cherry trees are shedding their leaves and I’d crunch through them but I don’t want to crunch through leaves. It’s still August. So let’s talk about another book. 

*****

Two Souls Indivisible, by James Hirsch. Our medical students read this during orientation week and so I joined them. It’s an inspiring story about two POWs in Vietnam - Porter Halyburton, who is White and from the South; and Fred Cherry, who was Black (he died in 2016), formed a deep friendship during their shared captivity, which sustained them through terrible suffering and pain. Cherry would likely not have survived without Halyburton, who cared for him through illness and infections resulting from dreadful injuries. The book was originally published in 2005, and in some ways, it does not hold up particularly well. Fred Cherry was apparently rather conservative in his attitudes on race, at least according to Hirsch, and preferred to distinguish himself from Black people involved in the civil rights movement, whom he saw as agitators. This is not to criticize Mr. Cherry, who was clearly a product of his time; but the author’s tone in discussing Cherry’s beliefs is condescendingly approving. Without looking at the publication date, I’d have guessed 1981. It’s a very good story but not such a great book. 

*****

July seems like ages ago, doesn’t it? All-Star weekend (Prince Mont Swim League All Stars, that is) was the last Saturday in July. Our son won one of the League scholarships that day and we left the meet very proud and happy though a little sad, since it was our very last summer meet. It was very hot that weekend and after a swim, we went to the first half of Barbenheimer, a 7 PM showing of "Barbie," which was great but would have been worth the price of admission, even if it wasn't great, just for Ryan Gosling's performance of "Push." Hilarious. We saw "Oppenheimer," also great, the next day. Anyway, this is apropos of nothing, except that it was just a few weeks ago, the very heart of summer, but it seems like ages ago, and summer is all but over. I swam last night and the water was very cold. And we just moved our son into his dorm, and we're driving home without him, and I feel lost. Bereft. 

*****

OK so the Barbenheimer digression wasn't really apropos of nothing, because now I'm reading American Prometheus, the Robert Oppenheimer biography upon which the movie is based. 

*****

The drop off itself wasn't so bad really. I had been dreading it all summer and it hit me hardest when we finally made our way through security and pre-clearance at the Dublin airport last week. As much as I love Ireland, the best part of that vacation was being together, all four of us, every day. That was over. I knew that the boys would be right back at work and doing their own thing as soon as we returned home, and when planning the vacation, I had only left us a few short days between the end of the trip and college move-in day for our youngest. It was all so fast, so rushed. I’m sure that the flight crew and other passengers wondered about the lady who was sitting and crying quietly in her seat, but no one asked me any questions, and I was OK after a few minutes. I tried to watch a movie but the video screen quality on this rather old and beaten-up plane was very poor and so I just returned to my book. 

*****

American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, is what critics used to call a “sweeping biography,” the story of a larger-than-life figure with the events of the day as backdrop. Oppenheimer, one of the greatest scientific geniuses who ever lived, not only witnessed the cataclysmic history of the 20th century, he created it, at least in part. You can admire Oppenheimer or despise him. His life story is compelling either way. 

I mostly admire him. One of the most interesting things about Robert Oppenheimer was his self-transformation, from dreamy genius stereotypically absent-minded professor to brilliant administrator and leader. Authors Bird and Sherwin give almost as much attention to Oppenheimer’s remarkable personal gifts - frequent and unexpected kindness, charisma, social brilliance, communication skill - as to his unequaled intellectual gifts, and rightly so. And added to that is that he was just born at the right time and in the right place - the son of sophisticated, wealthy, indulgent Jewish parents, born at the turn of the 20th century, he had all the advantages of travel and education and culture that that background afforded him, combined with timing that placed him in the middle of the most important events of the century. His Jewish background made the race to beat the Nazis in the nuclear weapons race personal, a matter of life and death in the most personal sense. 

This is another book published in 2005, and once again, certain aspects do not hold up. 2005 was longer ago than I thought, I guess. For example, Oppenheimer had the brilliant idea to hire local indigenous women to help the Los Alamos wives with housework, thus freeing the white women to help as lab assistants and secretaries and technicians. The authors present this in the most uncritical and unquestioning terms possible, as just another ingenious solution to a practical problem, a win win. Everyone's working and everyone's happy.  Never mind that the local women might have preferred to have a chance at one of the lab or office jobs rather than the poorly paid domestic jobs (the book makes no mention of comparative pay rates but I think it's safe to assume that the domestic workers made much less money than the project employees). And there's also very little discussion of how few women (almost none) had real jobs at Los Alamos in the first place.  

The book is also almost completely preoccupied with the question of whether or not Oppenheimer was a Communist and although the authors return again and again to the conclusion that he probably was not, they also don't really consider the idea that it should have been OK for Robert Oppenheimer to be acquainted with Communists without having his loyalty to the US constantly questioned. 

Outmoded thinking aside, though, the book is very good. The was-he or wasn’t-he inquiries into Oppenheimer’s political background are balanced by long and thoughtful discussions of his accomplishments, his personality and his mind, and his relationships with friends and family and colleagues and enemies. He was interesting enough to merit this much thought and consideration. 

*****

It’s Monday now, and Labor Day is a week away and I really miss having my son in the house. It’s a little harder now that the reality has set in and I know that I won’t see and talk to him in person every day. We’re texting back and forth all the time, and he’ll probably come home this weekend, but this is just the beginning of the process of separation, as more and more of his life will be his life, opaque to us except for whatever details he chooses to share. It’s right and normal and natural that this should happen but it’s not easy and it’s not pleasant. 

The pool closes in a week. Right now it’s cloudy and dull and not particularly warm but I’m going to swim anyway. 

*****

And I did. That was Monday, and now it’s Tuesday, still cloudy and dull and not particularly warm, but I swam last night and I’m going to do it again tonight. Even when the water is cold and the sky is gray and I can feel the summer slipping away, a swim always helps. The pool is open for just six more days and even though I can swim indoors after next Monday, it’s not the same. Swimming indoors is an exercise; it’s a thing to cross off your list, just like any other task. Swimming indoors is lap swimming. It’s not going swimming. You have to be outside somewhere if you want to go swimming. Lap swimming is good for your body. Going swimming is good for your soul. After next Monday, I won’t be able to go swimming anymore. But at least I’ll still be able to read.  

Ireland 2023

We leave for Ireland on Friday. It's Tuesday now and I already started to pack some things. About half of these things are things that I will actually wear. The other half, I'm not so sure about. I'm going to have to think about these things. These things are going to have to earn their way into my suitcase. 

The smart thing to do would be to bring only the half that I'm certain I'll wear. But I don't always do the smart thing, especially when it comes to packing. I'm a terrible packer. I don't want to overpack but I really really don't want to get across the Atlantic Ocean only to find that I don't have anything to wear; or to discover that the one thing that I really really want to wear is among the things that I left at home in my zeal to avoid overpacking. What I want is to have everything that I truly need and want, and a few nice-to-haves. I'll check Joan Didion's packing list, that's what I'll do. 

*****

Well, I’m glad you asked. Joan Didion’s packing list was almost as famous as Joan Didion. She wrote a list of things to pack for when she had to travel on a moment’s notice (a frequent occurrence) and she taped it to the inside of her closet door. Her list was, of course, spare and elegant, much like herself. Of course she had to lug a typewriter everywhere she went, so she had to keep everything else light. But she probably would have anyway. She’d have always known exactly what to pack and what to leave behind, and she’d never get across an ocean or across town and find that she didn’t have the one thing she needed most. 

I did make a list of all the essentials; and thanks to that list, I won’t leave home without a bathing suit or contact lens solution or sunglasses or a notebook or my Kindle. I’m trying to limit myself to two pairs of shoes. I’m only going to bring two jackets - one rain and one not. I’m going to put all of my lotions and creams and cosmetic items into the TSA-mandated quart-size ziploc bag, and anything that doesn’t fit in that little square of plastic is not getting on the plane with me. But the rest of the clothes? It’s going to take some doing to decide what to take and what to leave behind. 

*****

It’s Thursday night now. Today was my last day of work before the trip. We leave tomorrow. I stopped on my way home to buy some socks and some contact lens solution. The day before a trip is like the day before Christmas. Whatever you need, you’d better have - it’s too late to shop now. I think I have everything I need. Now I just have to work out my carry-on and checked bag strategy. I have a very nice check-in suitcase that is really more than large enough to carry everything I need. I could just hand everything over to the nice Aer Lingus people and breeze on to the plane carrying nothing but a handbag. But I won’t, for two reasons: One, I need to have at least a change of clothes and a jacket and some basic toiletries with me on the plane, in case they lose my suitcase. And two, I need to have a carry-on in case we accumulate stuff when we’re over there, which we’re certain to do. I think that I can pack one or even two very lightweight changes of clothes in my large Le Pliage, and carry that and my handbag onto the plane. My duffle bag can be folded up into my suitcase, and it can become my carry-on for the return trip. I’m sure that Joan Didion would have stuffed everything into a Pan Am shoulder bag and breezed past the baggage check. She’d have handed all of her wrinkled but elegant clothes over to a hotel housekeeper for ironing. She’d never have to figure out what silk blouses and cashmere sweaters and elegant knit jerseys went with which skirt or trousers (she’d have called them trousers) because everything she owned would have worked perfectly with everything else. Well good for you, Joan. It doesn’t work like that for me. 

*****

It’s Friday morning and I’m almost packed. I have room left in both my suitcase and my carry-on, a fact of which I am absurdly proud. Those bags aren’t closed yet, though, so I’ll have to temper my pride. Packing is like anything else - it’s not over until it’s over. 

Our boarding passes are printed and our passports are ready and we have a ride to the airport. My travel wallet is stocked with euros and pounds. We’ll be at the airport three hours early, as recommended for international flights, and then we’ll just hang around, I guess. I like hanging around in an airport. You can wander around the terminal, watch people come and go, listen to the boarding calls for flights all over the world. You can have a snack or a beer, maybe buy a book or some magazines for your flight, or maybe a silly neck pillow or an unnecessary tote bag. The sun (it’s sunny today) will be streaming through the giant windows, and we’ll watch planes take off and land. It’s a pretty good way to spend an afternoon. 

*****

Dublin, 5:30 AM. We had as smooth a flight as anyone could have wished, and now we're standing in the baggage claim at Dublin Airport, waiting for the carousel to start moving. Irish immigration let us breeze into the country with barely a second glance. The immigration officer asked my husband if it was our first visit to Ireland. "First visit for me and my sons," he said. "My wife has been here before." He took each of their passports in turn, saying "Welcome to Ireland" as he stamped the passports. When I handed him my passport, he nodded and smiled. "Ah, there's yourself," he said. I didn't need a "Welcome to Ireland." I had just been away for a bit and was now coming back. 

*****

We collected our bags and walked to the taxi rank, and a minute later we were speeding through early morning Dublin with a taxi driver eager to share stories and advice. "Hear that? Seagulls. That's Dublin."

We arrived at the hotel far too early to get into our rooms so we checked our bags and took a walk. Our hotel is on the canal so we walked the towpath and down Fitzwilliam Place. We returned to the hotel at 7. It was really just midnight DC time but we were all very very tired. It's disorienting to land in a foreign country at 5 AM. Hotel check in is not until 3, and you're still in your rumpled untidy travel clothes, burdened with bags and bundles. My husband is carrying a sweater and some books and a bottle of water in a plastic shopping bag. We have sturdy and presentable canvas and nylon tote bags, too many to count, and my husband is traipsing round Dublin carrying what amounts to a trash bag. That’s himself. 

*****

Last time I was in Ireland, we also landed in Dublin at 5 AM local time, which was midnight my time.  My travel companions spent the morning and early afternoon resting but I found that I couldn't stay still so I took my own private walking tour of Dublin and then returned to the hotel to collect my mother and drag her off to the St. Patrick's Day parade. Trust me, I was doing her a favor. For pretty much my whole life, she'd been talking about going to Ireland someday, and now here she was in Ireland, ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY, and she was reluctant to go to the parade because she didn't think she had the stamina to walk to the parade route and stand and watch. My mom loves St. Patrick's Day, and she loves Irish dancing and music and she loves parades and I knew that she'd regret it for the rest of her life if she missed her one chance to see the Dublin St Patrick's Day parade. So I dragged her out of the hotel and Bataan death marched her to the parade. I told her that she'd thank me later and she did. It was much later, though. 

Later that night I literally fell asleep at the table in a pub. I'd been awake at that point for at least 40 hours and something had to give. 

And I did the very same thing yesterday. We arrived at our hotel at 6 AM, far too early to check in. But kudos to the Dublin Hilton Charlemont Place staff because they took pity on us and got us into one of our two rooms at 8. Maybe they wanted us out of their very nice lobby. We didn't look our best, and we were not very decorative. 

My sons went to sleep immediately, and my husband also went to sleep when we got our second room an hour or so later. And I was profoundly tired but not sleepy at all, so I went out to explore on my own. Which was glorious but a little sad. I walked to MoLI, the Museum of Literature of Ireland, and took pictures of the garden where James Joyce probably wrote something or other. And then I walked through Stephen's Green, filled with picnicking families on a beautiful Saturday. And then I saw a wedding party leaving the Newman Center church, and I felt lonely, out-by-myself-in-a-foreign-country lonely. 

*****

Later that evening, reunited with my family and still wide awake, I suggested a little visit to Sandymount Beach, where we walked on the sea bed at low tide. We collected shells and took photos of the famous Poolbeg chimneys. We had a delicious dinner at a neighborhood pub, and although I managed to stay awake throughout the meal, I fell asleep in a taxi on the way back. When we arrived at the hotel, I got in bed fully clothed and slept the sleep of the dead. I woke up disoriented and confused, not knowing where I was or what time it was. It was 10 PM. I'd been asleep for a little more than two hours. 

*****

My sons and I differ on a crucial point. I believe that Kit Kats in Ireland are far superior to their American counterparts. They assert, wrongly, that the American version, the original, remains the best. My younger son also tried his first Guinness and hated it so much that he was hard pressed to even swallow the first sip. He does, however, acknowledge the superiority of the Irish breakfast, even though he considers grilled tomatoes an abomination. Both boys are enjoying pub dinners and packets of Tayto crisps and Yorkie chocolate bars. Yes we know that there's other food in Ireland. But we're on vacation. 

*****

"Thank you for traveling Iarnrod Eireann." I'm looking forward to hearing this very announcement on board the Irish Rail train to Belfast. Right now we're sitting in the waiting room at Connolly Station, waiting for our train to be called. We're laden with bags and baggage but so is everyone else. We're not the only people who overpacked this week, I tell you what. 

Our taxi driver from our hotel to Connolly gave us a brief overview of the stalemate at Stormont. He blames the DUP, and rightly so because it's their fault. He seemed to think that we, as Americans, couldn't possibly understand anti-democratic obstructionism and bad faith refusal to heed the will of the people. I didn't try to enlighten him. Let these sweet summer children maintain their innocence for as long as possible, that's what I say.  

*****

"What do you call a Northsider in a suit? The accused." A sample Dublin Northsider joke from our Liffey River tour guide, himself a proud Northsider. The boat cruise yesterday afternoon was our last tourist activity in Dublin. The tour guide and the pilot, both working class Dublin men of late middle age, regaled us with running commentary combining comedy, trenchant political observations (they're not fans of the greedy tech and real estate billionaires driving up rents in Dublin) and friendly insults toward each other. The cruise was nice, and those guys were hilarious. 

*****

I don't even know where I am right now. I'm on a tour bus, somewhere north of Belfast, driving on the left side of the road on a motorway with directional signs in blue. We're passing through a very cultivated area, prosperous looking farmland and houses surrounded by low brick walls or neat hedgerows. There are wind turbines at regular intervals. It's green and pretty, but tame. 

We arrived in Belfast yesterday and after settling into our hotel (when we called to report that our rooms appeared to be without electricity, the front desk person said "Aye, do ye have your wee room key, then? Just pop it into the wee slot by the door, then. Did that work, aye? There ye go.") We then set out by taxi to meet James, our tour guide, for a walking tour of West Belfast. We met at the infamous Divis Tower, now just an ordinary residential tower, and spent the next two and a half hours walking the Falls Road and the Shankill Road, taking photos and listening to stories and trying to make some sense of the Troubles. If you have trouble understanding how the United States is so divided and how people in the same family or the same neighborhood can have such differing political views, just visit the Falls Road and read the murals and signs, and then walk through the peace gate to the Shankill Road just steps on the other side and read their murals and signs and you will see how 180 degree opposition can exist in very close quarters, and how two very similarly situated groups of people can see things completely differently from one another. The Troubles are still not really over in Ireland and I'm afraid they're just beginning in the United States.

*****

Yesterday's tour bus took us to the Giant's Causeway, an astonishingly beautiful natural landmark on the Northern Irish coast. It wasn't part of our original plan because we were only two days in Belfast but enough people told us that we should try to see it that we rearranged our plans, and I'm happy we did. 

I toured the Ring of Kerry in 2019, and it was also beautiful. But it can't touch the Giant's Causeway, so much wilder and more remote. The northern coast of Ireland feels like the end of the world. The light and the air are incomparable. The high green cliffs surround you at Giant's Causeway and the rock formations form little pools in the Irish Sea and you can step out onto the hexagonal basalt Causeway and feel surrounded by cliffs and sky and sea and nothing else. 

There are lots of good things about a bus tour. It's easy, especially in Ireland if you don't want to try to drive on the wrong side of the road, and we don't. It's fun to ride on a great big motor coach, and kudos to our driver, Anil, who maneuvered that giant bus up and down very narrow winding roads, especially in beautiful Ballintoy (the northernmost settlement in Northern Ireland, from where you can see Scotland on a clear day). If you have a good tour guide, the ride can be very entertaining (our guide, an American expat, was fine, but other than the legend of Finn McCool, she didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know).  

The bad thing about a bus tour, of course, is that you have to go where they go, and adhere to their timetable. This means that we wasted half an hour at Dark Hedges to indulge the weirdo Game of Thrones contingent, when we would all have to rather spent a little more time at the Causeway, or at the beautiful lookout point at Ballintoy, looking at Sheep Island and Carrick a Rede and Scotland in the distance, and breathing that perfect air. I'll plan better next time. 

*****

It could rain anytime in Ireland. I checked the weather forecast every day in the week leading up to our trip, and rain was forecast for almost every day. We had a few drops of rain on Tuesday afternoon doing our Belfast walking tour, and a few drops on Thursday afternoon but other than those brief light showers, we've had clear bright sunshine all week. But good luck runs out eventually, and it's wet and gloomy here on our very last day. 

We're on a DART train from Dun Laoghaire to Howth. My original plan had us on a Dublin Bay cruise to Howth with the return trip by train but the tour company cancelled the cruise because of the weather. It's really not bad out and I suspected that the cancellation decision was based on economics rather than safety but the route to Howth runs right along the bay shore and the water looks choppy and rough so maybe that was the right call. What do I know?

My older son, who is very politically aware and engaged, is passionate about public transportation. I share his belief in its importance but I grew up riding subways and trolleys and buses, so I don't romanticize it as he does. But I have definitely enjoyed the freedom of jumping on a DART train or the Dublin Luas or a Belfast city bus and going wherever we want to go, pretty quickly and cheaply. It reminds me of when I was young. 

Between public transportation, including train travel between Dublin and Belfast, and 7 to 12 miles of walking every day, we've seen quite a bit. It's been a good, full week, with no wasted time. Our hotel here in Dun Laoghaire has a very warm indoor heated pool and spa. My younger son and I went to swim last evening and were greeted by the young man who runs the hotel's fitness center, which also caters to local members. "Aye, staying in the hotel then?" I said yes and gave him our room numbers.

"Grand," he said, handing us our towels. "And do ye have your swimming hats?" I did not have a swimming hat, nor had I ever heard a swim cap referred to as a swimming hat. My son is a competitive swimmer who owns no fewer than 50 caps, but he didn't have one either. Six euros later, we were both outfitted with stretchy red nylon swimming hats, and we spent a lovely 45 minutes swimming. Six euros well spent. We'll swim again this evening and when they ask me if we have our swimming hats, I'll wave my little red nylon cap and say "indeed we do."

*****

In Ireland, a blustery day is a lovely day, and we had a great time in Howth, gray and windy and damp but not wet, the silvery gray sky blending with the lead gray water of the harbor and bay. The weather didn't scare us, and it didn't scare anyone else either - Howth was lively yesterday. We walked along the piers and waterfront, taking photos and watching boats and looking for seals. There were seals everywhere, popping up out of the water for air and then diving back down for fish. Very entertaining animals. We had a late lunch and a pint in a little harborside pub, and then rode the DART back through the center of Dublin to Dun Laoghaire. The real weather didn't start until we were walking back into our hotel. Storm Betty dumped a ton of rain on southeastern Ireland overnight, and the rain was accompanied by high winds. The hotel room windows are designed so that you can keep them open in the rain (like many hotels in Ireland, this one doesn't have air conditioned rooms) and we laid in bed listening to the rain and wind. I woke up at 2:30 and the wind and rain were still going full force. But this morning, the sun is shining and the pavement is almost dry, thanks to the wind. There's a rainbow over the Wicklow Mountains, a nice Saturday morning view from our hotel room. It's almost time for our last Irish breakfast and our last look around the hotel room. Aer Lingus to Dulles this afternoon. 

*****

It’s Sunday now. I felt a little blue yesterday as we waited for boarding. The trip that I planned so carefully and looked forward to for months was over in a heartbeat, and my son is leaving for college in just a few days. I’m trying not to think too much about that. But it’s a sunny Sunday morning now, and I’m almost finished with laundry and unpacking, though it’s only 10:15. After Mass, I’ll restock the refrigerator and the pantry, pay some bills, and go swimming. I have no idea what the weather was like in Maryland last week, so I have no idea what the pool water temperature will be like. I’m just glad I don’t have to wear my little red swimming hat. 

Our trip home was almost completely uneventful. When we boarded the plane, I noticed that almost none of the crew were wearing Aer Lingus uniforms and I worried for a moment that there’d been a mix-up that put us on the wrong plane. And then an Aer Lingus representative announced that the Aer Lingus crew were not available and that the flight would be run by another European airline, with herself on board to represent Aer Lingus, and I worried for a moment that “unavailable” was secret code for “bound and gagged and held hostage in an undisclosed location” and that we were about to be hijacked. The 30-minute delay on the tarmac was not reassuring on that count. But the plane took off smoothly in due course, and thanks to favorable wind conditions, we landed 30 minutes earlier than scheduled, despite the delay in departing. We exited the plane, proceeded to baggage claim, and waited, looking around to see if anyone else smelled the smoke. And they did, and people started to murmur, and then all of a sudden an airport representative was walking through the baggage claim area, yelling at everyone to exit the building, which was on fire. And we were a little concerned, but we also wanted our bags. And so did everyone else on Aer Lingus EI119 from Dublin. We chatted among ourselves. There was an exit door right next to the carousel. It couldn’t be more than five minutes or so before our bags would arrive, and we could get out quickly. We stood still and waited. 

The PA system began broadcasting the evacuation order, and the airport representative walked past us again, and ordered us out, but she didn’t do anything to force us to leave. So we kept waiting. We could definitely smell smoke now, and could see it too, and we decided that we’d wait no more than two additional minutes, and then we’d abandon our luggage and go. My suitcase dropped just at that moment, and a minute later our other suitcase appeared, and we got out, probably just in time. I don’t think the fire was bad - local news wasn’t even covering it - but emergency vehicles were arriving and we’d have had a hard time getting out of the airport even two minutes later. 

Yeah, we’re eejits, I know. But we’re eejits who don’t have to return to Dulles Airport today to retrieve our bags, so it’s all good. All’s well that ends well. Our trip was perfect, and it ended well. 

Stormy weather

I’m sitting on my couch right now. It’s 5:45 on Monday afternoon, and a storm is raging outside my window. Literally raging. It sounds angry. At 5:00 the sun was still out though the sky was beginning to look threatening and dark. Hot and intensely humid and oddly still, it just felt like the proverbial calm before the proverbial storm. And now at 5:45, all hell is breaking loose. The sky went from bright and sunny to gray to darkening to almost completely dark in a matter of minutes. A few drops of rain fell and then the sky just opened. The wind is gusting, as they say on the weather report. I haven’t seen any lightning but there’s been a steady rumble of thunder. This storm is no longer in the realm of the proverbial. It's as real as a heart attack. 

*****

We have lots of old, tall trees in our neighborhood and storms like this are always a little bit scary. I’m writing this on a Chromebook. The lights are still on and the house is comfortable, and we’re all at home listening to the local news broadcast. Who knows how much longer we’ll have power, though; and even though the Chromebook is fully charged, it won't work when the power goes out. The nonstop weather updates are making me anxious but I can’t seem to look away. It’s just weather though. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen and I can’t change it by watching the weather report, or by turning it off. It’s out of my hands. Humbling, really, but kind of liberating too. 

*****

Intense but brief, the stoem was over almost as quickly as it started, with almost no major consequences. Our power stayed on, as it did for most people here. No major downed trees, no serious flooding, no big lightning strikes, no tornadoes. At 5:45, we were hunkering down, with candles and flashlights and battery operated radio close at hand. By 7:15, my husband and I were in the car, on our way to Costco, as we had previously planned to do. And now it's Tuesday, 5:15 PM. There's not a cloud in the sky. 

Handwritten

I learned, earlier this summer, that there is a national penmanship competition, something like the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but for handwriting. The young girl who won first place this year had a word of advice for potential future penmanship champions: Take your time. Don't rush. Slow and steady wins the penmanship trophies 

It's good advice. I know this, because my handwriting is dreadful, nothing more than scribble, and that is because I write fast, when I hand write anything at all, which I don't often do. But it wasn't always that way. When I was a young girl at a Philadelphia Catholic school in the 1970s, I wrote beautifully. I had to, of course - all the stories about nuns and handwriting are 100 percent true, and penmanship was a graded subject for us. I was a straight A student and I was determined to remain one, so I practiced my Palmer Method. 

But I didn't just practice to keep my place at the top of my class at St. John the Baptist. I practiced because I loved penmanship. I loved forming perfect, elegant looping letters, and I loved feeling my Bic pen scratching across the pale blue-lined pages of my marble composition books. Then as now I spent most of my time reading and writing. 

I competed in a city-wide Catholic school spelling bee when I was in 7th grade. The girl who was the unofficial boss of our school’s team didn’t invite me to join, and I didn’t stand up for myself, and I thought that was the end of it. Then on the day before the bee, the rest of the team heard that I’d been deliberately excluded, and they insisted on adding me to the team. This wasn’t because I was such a popular favorite. It was because I was a really good speller. As a last-minute entrant with one day to study, I got fourth place in that spelling bee, the only top ten finish in our school. I was happy to have done well but I didn’t care that much - spelling came so naturally to me that I wasn’t particularly proud of my skill, any more than I was proud of my blue eyes or brown hair. I was just born that way. But I worked really hard at my handwriting, and I was proud of it. If there had been a handwriting competition, I’d have been first in line to enter, and I would have practiced. I might not have won  - I wasn’t a natural - but I’d have been a contender. 

*****

Well of course there’s a point to all of this because when do I ever go off on ridiculous irrelevant tangents? I’m planning a trip right now and there’s a lot to keep track of - hotel reservations and plane tickets and ground transportation and passport numbers and daily itineraries - it’s a lot to keep straight in my mind. It’s a lot to remember. Of course, I set up a dedicated folder for all emails pertaining to the trip, but I like to know things right off the top of my head, and I don’t want to depend on my phone for everything. So I’m going to write it all down, in a brand-new notebook. Writing it down will serve two purposes; one being that everything will be written down somewhere in case my phone dies or gets stolen or is otherwise inaccessible to me, and the other being that the very act of writing things down helps me to remember them. And then there’s a third thing, an added bonus - I can work on my handwriting, which really needs work. 

*****

When I heard the story about the penmanship competition, I immediately got a pen and paper (ruled, of course) and started practicing the classic penmanship test sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. This sentence contains every letter of the alphabet, making it ideal for practicing your Palmer Method. I managed to scratch out a few neatly written lines - the page actually looked rather pretty - but there's no way that I'd get past the first round in any sanctioned competition. My handwriting, even when I make an effort to keep it neat and legible, is an unorthodox hybrid of printing and cursive that would not stand up to the most careless scrutiny, let alone the gimlet eye of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I couldn't even remember how to write a Z in Palmer Method. I'm 40 years out of practice. 

But that’s OK. I’m not going to enter any penmanship contests, but that doesn’t mean I can’t work on my handwriting just to improve it for the sake of improvement. My notebook is slowly filling up with useful information, in non-standard but neat and clear (and large because my eyesight is not what it was) handwriting. I’m finding as I do this that there is another benefit to hand writing notes. That young penmanship champion was right - you really have to take your time. And when you do take your time and make the effort to write clearly and neatly, you are forced to slow your roll a bit. You have to be thoughtful and deliberate. You can’t multi-task your way through hand-writing a trip plan. You have to take a one thing at a time approach, which not only ensures that you’ll do a better job at whatever task you’re trying to accomplish, it also clears the clutter from your brain. And mine is considerably cluttered. 

*****

Today I attended a meeting of the university’s Journal Club. This sounds like something I would have wanted to do when I was 11 or so. I would have loved a journal club - a group of like minded girls sitting around with our journals, reading our best bits aloud, discussing books and movies, and maybe eating fancy snacks and sipping tea. But I didn't know any like minded girls. Not one of my friends would have been even slightly interested in sitting around, reading and writing, and talking about reading and writing. We played games and listened to records and stampeded around the neighborhood but we never once sat in a circle with journals on our laps. A pity.  

Journal Club was of course nothing like a childhood dream journal club but it was still pretty awesome. We listened to a speaker and watched a TED Talk and then we answered discussion questions in writing. Some of the other participants wrote their answers in the meeting chat but I got a pen, found a clean page in my notebook, and put it all on paper. Later on, I'll finish the final Journal Club requirement, a short reflection, which I'll write in Google Docs. That's the difference between paper and pen and a computer. The former is for writing things down. The latter is for writing, full stop. 

*****

My trip is almost planned. We decided to skip Galway this time - it’s pretty far from Dublin and Belfast - and just spend the last two days in Dun Laoghaire from where we can explore some Dublin Bay sights. I’m trying to get tickets for Kilmainham Gaol, which is much more popular than a jail (or gaol) should be. I’m looking for Belfast walking tour recommendations. I saw an advertisement for a murals tour that promised a “balanced view” of the Troubles, with due consideration given to both the Republican and Loyalist points of view. The Google Ads geniuses don’t know their audience, because I’m not at all interested in a neutral interpretation of the Troubles; at least not until the British get out of Ireland. But that’s not the point. The point is that all of the details on these various excursions are or soon will be neatly recorded in pen and ink in my notebook. If I lose my phone or my connection, I’ll have a notebook to refer to. And I’ll remember things better for having written them down. And you never know when I might want to try for that penmanship trophy.